Publication

User experience (UX) has been a hot topic in design and human computer interaction research over the past decades, sprung from need of understanding users subjective responses to a product. Design research and UX are linked by partly common influences. In order to understand this relation, a literature review is made, analysing the roots and assumptions behind current major approaches towards UX. One research stream within UX can be found in cognitive science approaches, where systematic analysis of human responses toward products are in focus. This approach shares many of the assumptions from seeing design as “meaning creation”. The other major direction in UX research is rooted in pragmatism and takes a holistic approach towards understanding the fully subjective and individual user experience, mainly based on analysis of experience narratives. This direction is related to design research approaches such as design as a “reflective activity” and design as a “problem solving activity”. I argue that there is a need to further expand UX research from mainly a concern with UX as a phenomenon, towards UX as a practice in the design process, providing tools and inspiration. In this, I will start out with an holistic view on UX, but will not exclude the need to employ some of the methods from cognitive approaches.